Re: [Boa Constr] SSHExplorer

[Riaan B. <riaan@e.co.za>]

Hi Yuppie,

Yuppie wrote:
> 
> Hi!
> 
> Does anyone use the SSHExplorer?

Me! I use it to browse my SourceForge shell account and copy files 
to/from it. My one and only test case :)

> My environment:
> 
> - Boa 0.1.3 a
> - Windows 98 SE
> - OpenSSH on Windows v3.4-2
> 
> My experiments:
> 
> - I managed to browse the remote filesystem
>      o  using the absolute root path ("/home/user", not "~")

I assume you mean you changed the property 'root' of the SSH 
connection.

You *should* change this (as you did) to wherever you need.
It's a property in the Inspector after all!
~ still sounds like a valid default that has a better chance
of working that any other default value.

>      o  changing 'ls %s -la' to 'ls -la %s' in the source

It worked for me, but yes, 'ls -la %s' is better (at least that's 
the way I usually list files ;)

> - I tried to open files from remote filesystem
>      o  copyToFS and copyFromFS seem to use pscp, not my scp
> 
> My questions:
> 
> - Is pscp PuTTY-scp? Does SSHExplorer work if I install this?

Yes, it's putty scp. The only scp I could get to work (see below).

> - So SSHExplorer doesn't work on unix platforms?

The browsing part should work. The copying part won't (as it is 
currently).

As these tools are actually unix tools, there is no reason
for it not to work there if you change the strings in the
buildSCPStrs method.

I've actually forgotten about this issue (pscp) thanks!
In my defence, this is the first feedback I've received about SSH 
support.

Under 2.3.3.1/wxGTK Boa's SSH support is currently broken on unix 
anyway due to different issue (Problem with wxProcess and it's streams)
so you won't even get this far.

> - Why do I need scp_pass? scp does key authorization like ssh.

Mine doesn't, not exactly the same.

The biggest issue (if I recall correctly) was that scp always 
prompts for a password/passphrase and would not use the stored key
without prompting.

When running it from another process, It is impossible to 'feed' 
scp a password/passphrase on stdin as password input is handled 
handled differently by the shell than normal input.
(With a blank passphrase and the identity file ssh does not prompt)

That's why I chose pscp that accepts a password on the command line.

(later, the above left in for historical purposes ;)

After testing scp again it seems to be working now! 
Granted I'm not on the same machine I was when I wrote SSHExplorer,
but I have no idea what has changed in the meanwhile.

The new problem I now have is that scp does not accept windows 
paths. (Seems to be a quick and dirty port)

e.g. 
scp <remotepath> text.txt

copies fine, but

scp <remotepath> c:\text.txt

gives an error :/

One way to work around this would be to change the current directory 
to the localpath directory before running the command.

(later again)

Ok I installed the OpenSSH that you are using (I think).

It was unable to use my current public/private keys so I uninstalled it. 
I'm *not* going thru that whole new key process now.
(Also it's cygwin based and I really prefer the simple 
 scp.exe/ssh.exe setup I had)

I'll implement the current directory hack, that should work for both 
of us and also on Linux.

For you this change should be sufficient:

    def buildSCPStrs(self, source, dest):
        return 'scp %s %s'%(source, dest), 'scp %s %s'%(source, dest)

Cheers,
Riaan.